Domestic Water Use

A domestic well in south Georgia serves the water needs of one household. Credit: Alan Cressler, USGS.

Domestic water use includes indoor and outdoor uses at residences, and includes uses such as drinking, food preparation, bathing, washing clothes and dishes, flushing toilets, watering lawns and gardens, and maintaining pools. Domestic water use includes potable and non-potable water provided to households by a public water supplier (domestic deliveries) and self-supplied water use. Self-supplied domestic water use is typically withdrawn from a private
source, such as a well, or captured as rainwater in a cistern.

2010 Water Use

(source: Maupin, M.A., Kenny, J.F., Hutson, S.S., Lovelace, J.K., Barber, N.L., and Linsey, K.S., 2014, Estimated use of water in the United States in 2010: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1405, 56 p., http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1405/.)

The majority of people in the United States used water provided by public suppliers. Domestic deliveries by public water suppliers totaled 23,800 Mgal/d in 2010 and represented water provided to 268 million people at single-family and multifamily dwellings.

Self-supplied withdrawals for domestic use were estimated at 3,600 Mgal/d, or about 1 percent of total withdrawals for all uses in 2010, supplying an estimated 44.5 million people. Nearly all (98 percent) of these self-supplied withdrawals were from fresh groundwater sources.

Total domestic water use (withdrawals and deliveries
from public supply), top states, 2010
[percentages calculated from unrounded values]

Self-supplied domestic withdrawals declined 3 percent between 2005 and 2010, and public-supply deliveries for domestic use declined 7 percent over the same period.

Public-supply deliveries for domestic use are not available for 1950, 1955, and 2000.
Values for 1960-1980 include distribution system losses.

Data sources

Methods for estimating domestic deliveries from public suppliers included surveys of public-supply sales information, calculations using coefficients for per capita use, and development of average percentages of deliveries to various customer categories. Self-supplied domestic withdrawals are rarely metered or reported; typically this usage is calculated by multiplying an estimate of the population not served by public supply by a coefficient for daily per capita use. For some States, these coefficients are county-specific averages derived from observed residential water use and population estimates in nearby areas served by public suppliers. Other States use the same coefficient for all counties, commonly one used by State regulatory or planning agencies.